MAYBE IT’S TIME TO GO HOME
This little moment isn’t about what you might think, but I felt it important to get the obvious thoughts out of the way first. With that said let’s get to it.
I didn’t drink the last beer nor did I have the last drop of wine or spirits poured into my glass. I didn’t stagger away into the night. The times I had fallen after a few drinks could be counted on one hand. I’ve never worn a lampshade on my head or felt the urge to remove my clothing for no reason at all. The times I have fallen for reasons other than alcohol are countless. More due to the Cerebral Palsy I’ve had since birth than anything else. I’ve only had two hangovers in my entire life and never had to call in sick the next day because I didn’t feel well after a night of drinking. I have insulted a few people now and then by my more than candid honesty fueled by an extra glass of wine at the worst possible time. And there are the number of times I’ve hurt or degraded the person most important to me in life, my wife, with ill – thought out statements that probably shouldn’t have been said in the first place. A regret I will carry the rest of my life. This isn’t about any of that.
Outside of a few years here and there I have pretty much lived in the same place where I was born, just not in the same part of town or the same house, some big, some small. Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve watched this place go from a small cow town to one of the largest cities in the US.
Each day I drive by places that didn’t used to exist and remember the vast tracts of desert and farmland that rolled out as far as the eye could see in any direction that are now covered with buildings and asphalt. As a boy I’d ride around with my uncle when he came to visit from California to see family so he could survey all of the changes since his last visit. He grew up here like I had. He graduated from college here as an Entomologist and spent most of his life inventing insecticides and fertilizers for the agriculture industry or helping plant nurseries produce healthier plants and flowers after he got out of Army where he had been in one of the last horse mounted Cavalry units. We’d drive down the road with me and my cousin listening to one of his long, drawn out, stories of his younger days in that extremely slow drawl and cadence he had. Every now and then he’d look out the window and say “That used to be (or still is) ol’ So and So’s cotton field, orchard, watermelon patch”…whatever. Once in a while he’d recognize someone on the street he hadn’t seen in years. Someone he may have worked for or went to school with and stop just long enough to have a quick conversation with them like they’d seen each other just yesterday then off we went again. They’re all gone now. The land and many of those people too. No one talks to anyone like that if they don’t have to these days. Casual conversation seldom happens in public anymore, much less than at any other time. If they do…it’s all phony, shallow and has little importance or meaning. Nobody has much history with too many people these days. If they do it almost always seems to be bad history.
Much of the land was gobbled up when I was a boy and turned into gleaming subdivisions filled with honest hardworking people and their families that flocked to the valley after World War II and the Korean War. Now many of those same places are run down skeletons of their former glory filled with low income families who really don’t give a shit about anything except what entitlement programs they might qualify for. The few that do give a shit and can’t afford to escape their plight have fortified their homes against potential invaders who might harm them physically or relieve them of what few possessions they do have when they’re not home to guard them.
My grandparents lived in one of those very subdivisions. Just south of what was called Tower Plaza when I was growing up back when it was new and a great place to live. An idyllic southwestern any town kind of place with manicured and landscaped lawns in the front, gardens full of flowers, vegetables and herbs in the back and enough trees you could practically swing from tree to tree down the street without touching the ground. The homes were simple but roomy. The moms and daughters paraded up and down the sidewalks in brightly patterned sun dresses going here and there while walking their dog and stopping to chat with neighbors and trade gossip.
My grandfather was the senior construction supervisor for a guy named Del Webb who was building pretty much anything and everything in the southwest back then and kept my grandfather busy for more decades than I can recall. I heard about him helping build, or saw pictures of, or watched him build things like Hoover Dam, bridges, public buildings, stores, skyscrapers, country clubs and the first three phases of the world’s first retirement community called Sun City. On weekends I was lucky enough, from time to time, to ride with Pop and Del in Del’s plane while they flew all over Arizona. My grandfather dutifully filming everything with his 8mm camera as Del, at the controls of the plane, looked out the window saying “Own that, own that, gonna own that soon.” with the same ho hum attitude people have when commenting while looking through a catalog or something.
Pop was paid well but lived modestly. The neighborhood he and my grandmother lived in might not have been considered upper middle class by today’s way of pigeonholing where people live as a way of gauging social position or prominence but it probably was. The neighbors came from all walks of life yet they all seemed “regular people”. The man next door was the family dentist. The guy across the street owned a gas station and his next door neighbor drove a milk truck, Pot Luck dinners seemed to constantly be happening as frequently as the cocktail parties. The weekends were filled with such activities. People would return home from their travels and their friends, relatives and neighbors would throw a party to eat, drink and hear of what they experienced (and of course there was always the pre-requisite slide show). It wasn’t uncommon to see my family sitting around having a laugh with the family doctor, lawyer, milkman, mailman, flower shop owner, Del and others all just getting along and having a good time. You never noticed any posturing going on with anyone.
I drove by my grandparent’s house not too long ago. The yards were all dirt at their old place and up and down the street looked every bit as desolate as theirs did. The trees were all gone and replaced by inoperable vehicles in many cases. Houses needed painting, roofs needed replacing, gang tags adorned walls, and discarded junk was everywhere. Maybe it’s time to go home.
Even though a good part of my family was in agriculture or animals most weren’t. They were also business people, shop keepers and owners, construction workers, machinists, factory workers, professional people, teachers and more. Few of us, myself included, lived in rural settings but the feeling back then was certainly more rural than urban and the two worlds co-mingled seamlessly. Everybody knew you and/or a relative or two of yours and knew who to call if you got caught doing something stupid.
My boyhood home was less than two miles from my grandparent’s old place so I made a quick side trip east to see what it was like. It wasn’t as in disrepair as my grandparents neighborhood but it did show all the signs of decline. The vacant field north of our street on the SE corner of 48th St and McDowell had long since been converted to a hodgepodge of businesses many times over since I was last there. If I had wanted to I could no longer look between the houses across the street and over the then vacant lot, and across McDowell Rd, to see one of my uncles farm. I remember the family get-togethers there with the barbecue going and the men sitting with their beers and a big jar of pequina peppers in chairs on the patio in the shade of the citrus trees that started at the end of the patio and ran west as far as you could see. They’d prop their boots on the low rock wall that surrounded the patio made, as was the house, out of river rock gathered from the nearby Salt River. They’d sit there for hours and tell jokes, talk about hunting and make a good natured political opinion or two along the way while flipping burgers, steaks, chicken, ribs and whatever else we decided to cook that day (many freshly slaughtered or hunted) and every now and then grimace after eating one of those fiery little green peppers and say “Damn! Those are good!” as a few tears rolled out of their eyes. I still love those little peppers to this day, even though I’ve long since discovered other peppers equally as hot (if not hotter). The women chatted away with each other while cooking, baking and drinking wine in the kitchen. All of us kids would run through the orchard, spook a few cows and piss off the bull while playing tag or catch and stuff. The sun would set and turn the sky purple and the clouds orange by the time we all got around to eating. The food was fresh and plentiful. Along with the meat were always several types of beans (including a big pot of pintos), different salads and other veggies from out of someone’s garden, homemade breads, rolls and buns and enough desserts to fill a pastry shop. In the summer…homemade ice cream too. We’d wash it all down with gallons of sodas, sun tea and lemonade for the kids and enough wine and beer to float a ship for the adults. You could smell the food cooking from a mile in any direction all day and we were always hungry long before it was ready because of that.
Even if I could have looked across the road to see it…the farm was long gone before I was even out of elementary school and turned into houses and everything else you can imagine, torn down and turned into something else several times over by now. The house is still there but you have to know where to look to find it buried well behind the long driveway that used to lead to it filled and lined with more citrus trees and now is occupied by eight duplex apartments full of tenants of questionable nationality and possible criminal backgrounds.
Gone too is my uncle’s dairy store that was at 32nd St and McDowell on the far west end of what had been all of his property from 32nd St to 52nd St and from McDowell to Oak St. It sat well back from the street with an acre long horseshoe driveway. It had a big yellow ice machine next to the driveway entrance that sold bags and blocks of ice for a nickel twenty-four hours a day. The dairy shop was at the end of the driveway built in a “U” shape around the end of the drive that had big exposed glass fronted refrigerators under steel awnings that came down to lock them at night filled with milk, eggs, butter and whatnot. My uncle would sit on the porch of the store on an old steel patio chair waiting for the next customer. He’d always have his feet propped up on a milk crate with a cold can of Coor’s next to him swapping stories and lies with friends and relatives who liked to hang out there with him. When it was time to close up he’d unhook the big steel awnings hanging over the porch and lock them down against the big wall of refrigerators and lock the thick steel door to the little shop where the cash register and sundries were and go home. He never seemed to be in a hurry or doing much of anything but somehow managed to run a farm, a store, and a few business ventures every day and accomplish more in a day than fifty people generally do today. You’d never know the store existed if you drove past that place now.
In between those places on what used to be part of that farm was the elementary school that had my first Little League team on it. I didn’t go to that school but played many games there for a couple of summers before moving to California for a few years. The school was barely there and the field had become just another part of the playground. The dirt parking lot, backstop, bleachers and diamond are gone and all I have to remember any of that by is a black and white photo of me posing with my team and a glove almost as big as I was with my Dad in his coach’s shirt standing in the background. No one would ever believe what had gone on at that corner of that playground these days, even me. The unimportance of it all lost to the casual observer with no historical significance except to someone who used to be eight years old and play there. My own old elementary school was torn down and built in another location while I was in California. The entire property where it once was is filled with hotels and office skyscrapers where the school once stood. Whoever coined the phrase “change is good” couldn’t have meant that as an absolute could they? I remember getting my first kiss from a girl there on that playground that no longer exists. A curiously exciting experience that led to so many more such experiences as I got older like holding hands, going steady, kissing until your lips were raw, exploring each other’s bodies in every fashion imaginable (and perhaps some unimaginable) and, ultimately, losing your virginity. Other experiences would follow after that. Enough to fill several books dutifully chronicling the sexual and sensual sensations shared with so many amazing and interesting people I have encountered around the world since that first kiss.
I can still remember standing in my yard and watching cowboys drive small herds of cattle down 48th St to the holding pens and ultimately the slaughter house and packing plant Cudahy Bar-S had at 48th St and Van Buren. Right behind them would be a growing procession of cars wishing they would move a little faster. Commuters these days would be up in arms and doing everything they could to have laws passed to prevent such an occurrence from impeding their lives in such a rude waste of their time.(come to think of it they eventually did pass such laws a few years after we moved from there.)
There was a steakhouse at the end of the street on 48th and Van Buren too called the Stockyards. Back then you could go to the big picture window at the back of the restaurant which overlooked the stockyards. From there you could pick out your cow, have it led across the street and an hour or so later be served on your plate just the way you like it with all of the other fixin’s for dinner without messing up your jacket and tie. Down the street the waitresses at the Big Apple carried real six shooters in their holsters instead of the fake ones they use today and the sawdust was much thicker on the floor. I liked it because you didn’t have to dress for dinner. The only time I enjoyed getting dressed for dinner was when we were going to the Green Gables at 24th St and Thomas. It was worth the aggravation to see the Knight in armor, mounted on a white horse, who would lead your car to its parking space. To a kid that was special. It didn’t occur to me until many years later how that poor kid in the suit of armor must have felt like a roasted turkey by the end of his shift in this Arizona heat.
The Green Gables, stockyards, packing plant, slaughterhouse and the big window on the back of the restaurant are all gone but the Stockyards restaurant and the Big Apple is still there. Maybe it’s time to go home.
The irrigation ditches in my old neighborhood have all been finally enclosed. From the looks of things and how run down everything is long before now. Irrigation has been the lifeblood of this valley long before white settlers had arrived. To this day it’s not uncommon to unearth yet another canal link or farm settlement at a new construction site around here that the Hohokam Indians had dug by hand across the valley over eight hundred years ago to irrigate their crops. Something that, to this day, is important to many people and their survival, even if it’s only to water their lawns. A story went back then that once they had unearthed what many believed to be the largest settlement the Hohokam built here just a few blocks south of my house and east of the stockyards people would hear drums and chants in the quiet of the evening floating through the crisp night sky. Some years later they bulldozed a portion of that archeological site to make room for yet another much needed freeway to help people get from point A to point B as smoothly as possible, hopefully without killing each other in the process. These days the only drum beat you’re likely to be able to hear in this neighborhood is the ear splitting thud, thud, thud of an over-amped sound system in some kid’s car.
Not long after everyone had moved into our new neighborhood (did I tell you it was a brand new neighborhood?) one of the neighbors thought it would be a good idea to enclose the irrigation ditches so nobody got hurt in them (especially us kids) and asked everyone else what they thought. In a show of typical community responsibility back then everyone agreed. They approached the Salt River Project who handles most of the power and all of the irrigation needs of the valley to do it. SRP wasn’t interested in doing anything at the time so it was decided that a few of the neighbors would get bids to have it done and everyone would chip in their part of the cost. Our side of the street was all for it, the other side…not so much. Needless to say we got ours enclosed and the north side didn’t. Everyone had to contribute some labor to get it done but it got done and rather quickly I might add. Even I had to work a wheelbarrow and a shovel to help. A few years later that proved to be a costly mistake by our neighbors on the north side of the street for reasons no one could have predicted or imagined.
At the end of our street was a large chunk of land where the Motorola Electronics Company had (and still has under a different name) a huge plant. One of several large plants they had in the valley. Unbeknownst to anyone, not long after our houses were built and the ditches put in place, Motorola had decided that open ditch on the north side of the street was the perfect place to dump part of their used TCE, TCP and other chemicals when they were done. Some years later a number of my childhood friends developed and died from various cancers at far too young ages for reasons people couldn’t initially figure out. Before long the occurrences and similarities were happening far too often to be just a coincidence. An investigation was eventually launched and it was discovered that Motorola had contaminated the soil and ground water in and around our neighborhood and a large part of the valley nearly eighty miles to the west and thirty miles north and south of the plant rendering the groundwater unfit to use (we sit on the world’s largest underground lake by the way) and creating the first (and world’s largest) Superfund site (imagine that). The cancers my friends were dying from came from playing in and around those irrigation ditches and being exposed to and possibly ingesting those chemicals. Cancer cells popped up around other parts of the west valley causing for more testing, research and treatments and lawsuits. Subdivisions and large chunks of land were stigmatized and deemed worthless. Just within the last few years have portions of the original Superfund site been reclaimed and deemed fit for use. By whom I have no idea and to what degree is still a debatable issue. I was probably spared that short death by us moving to California when my family did. All of the physical maladies I have endured and survived to this day are genetic in nature so far and not from environmental contaminants. I look up and down the street as I get into my car knowing how lucky I am in that regard and think…Chernobyl …maybe it’s time to go home.
I have traveled around a good portion of the country and some of the world and seen and experienced many things and the incredibly interesting people that inhabit this world in my lifetime. Some places I felt I could comfortably live there but never enough to actually try and live there. Other places were beautiful and entertaining but never felt like home. I would inevitably return to the valley and that skewed, maverick sense of community that always seemed to be here or at least hoped was still here. Yet when I arrived… The problem is…I’m not sure it exists here, much less anywhere else, anymore. The few exceptions that do exist have a greater sense of family and community than we do here these days (like anyplace in the Mediterranean) and I don’t know why that is. Lately I find myself asking why a lot. The past had its golden moments to be sure. Even if now and then a dark side appeared, the present…not so much. What is it that holds me to this place so strongly? Why do I still feel obliged to find a way to try and create a life here? Family is an obvious choice, but beyond that what, a sense of familiarity or history? I would hope there is something more to it than that. I’m sure there is but I have no idea what that other element might be.
Each time I go away and come back something doesn’t feel right. It all feels less real, less valuable in some non-materialistic way. The “Welcome Homes” are non-existent and unimportant. Besides that there are fewer and fewer people to share them with each passing day. Things that were once important hold very little regard to me anymore. It takes a lot more to excite me visually, intellectually and emotionally. Friendships that probably should have been cultivated for longer than they were have long been discarded and replaced with fewer and fewer people, in many cases with less and less importance. My criteria for acceptance as my friend has, unfortunately in many ways, become more finite, simply put, it’s fucking difficult to find interesting, intelligent, fun people to be around that don’t bore the hell out of me! So my circle of friends shrinks almost on a daily basis. The lifestyle I found myself in at a very early age gave me unique people I could relate to. They were comfortable in their own skin and felt no need to fit in a certain mold. They were creative, fun, sexy, sensual, uninhibited and a little twisted in some cases, albeit harmlessly twisted. That world nurtured and sustained me for all of these years. That world was (and still is) international in flavor, morality and thinking. Sharing ideas “outside of the box” was stimulating and fun and necessary to discuss, to get off of our chests, for our own mental well being and survival. These days free thinkers are getting harder and harder to find. The question askers and “what- ifers” of my youth and young adult life are now running the world. They’re a mere shadow of themselves these days afraid to think much less outside of the box. Look how fucked up that’s become due to a fear of breaking the status quo. Many say they’re ground breaking, pioneering, daring or try and convince themselves they are…but they’re most definitely not.
Even though there are more of us in the lifestyle I live in than ever before in this world it gets increasingly harder to find real people within it. There are far too many out there these days who want the excitement, stimulation and feeling of daring associated with being a swinger or some other alternate lifestyle…but on their own rules with their own limitations. They don’t want to go too crazy or be too daring because it might expose them for what they really are…insecure children playing dress-up and pretending to be worldly adults. Their hang-ups far too real to genuinely be perceived as the cool, hip, enlightened person they desperately want to project to the rest of their friends and the world at large.
Many people have blamed the internet for a lot of this and I can’t disagree entirely with that, but there’s something more to it than that. What is driving people to abandon who they really are? Why is everyone afraid of “That”? I just haven’t figured out exactly what “that” is but it must be a lot more devastating than I could ever imagine it to be.
All I know for sure is I don’t want to sit around and hear how important you think your job is or how your kids need medication and therapy, the size of your house, the cost of your car or the overpriced tourist-centric vacation you just took. Nor do I want to look at you try and pretend you’re some age younger than you really are. I want to know about you. I want to know what makes you tick. I want to know about the journey you took to get where you are today and what wisdom you brought with it. I want to celebrate all of that with you. I want to know what really gets you passionate. I want to know who shared your table when you ate the best meal of your life so far and where you ate it at. I want to know why you chose to go where you went on that last trip and what you really got out of it besides a few souvenirs and some pictures of you standing in front of some statue, painting or building and it had better be something more compelling than “everyone else has been there lately so we wanted to see what the buzz was all about”. Are YOU out there?
When I went away I’d get completely lost in where I was. I was more a local than a tourist, even if I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t always eat where the tourists ate. I came home with experiences and treasures not found in a tour book or a gift shop. My pictures and notes were many times filled with people I had experienced things with more than just a guided tour of someplace with. They were decadent experiences, erotic and sometimes, animalistic in nature. You could smell the spices of the food, visualize the colors and textures, imagine and hear new rhythms and sounds most of us never had heard before. I would return thinking “what if” not feeling more disconnected than when I left. I wanted to share those things with people. Maybe it’s time to go home.
I talk to people every day. We do our little dance around each other making sure not to divulge too much. Candy coated words with double meanings looking for signs…of what I’m not sure anymore. To be understood is wanted but unthinkable. What if they can use it against me? Being accepted (or worse, being honest) might be more trouble than one might want to undertake too. What would I have to sacrifice to maintain that acceptance and is it worth the effort? Yet failing to have either of those things happen would be disastrous and, could potentially, make you a social, political or corporate outcast. We secretly fear to leave our imprint or mark on anything terrified of it being what…wrong…or worse, right? Because of this we all have come to know everyone and everything, yet, really don’t know anyone or anything anymore… especially ourselves.
I’ve lived in many places throughout my life. Each one pleasant enough and the people were more tolerable than most in many of those places but I still keep looking for “that place” with “those people”. I’m at that juncture in my life again quite by unplanned circumstances. Where shall I find that long lost sense of community? Where is that place where the wine and the conversation flow freely? Where is that place that sparks creativity? Where is that place where the people are fun, intimate and real?
I have no idea but… It’s time I went home.